


The World Darkly Spinning Until Made Bright

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Angst, Background Ethan/Brona, Bisexual Character, Character Study, Doubt, Falling In Love, Friendship, Hint of Ethan/Vanessa, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Rare Pair Fest, Reflection, Repressed Memories, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4581810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could have hallucinated the kiss, the way their skin melted together for four minutes that seemed more like eternities, dripping with the hope that he wasn't lost but simply searching, ever-searching for a world where he wasn’t running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Darkly Spinning Until Made Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arithanas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/gifts).



> Written for Arithanas for Rare Pair Fest. A reflection on that tantalizing scene in Season 1. Hope you enjoy.

He didn’t really want to be someone else, but if Dorian believed he did then Ethan feared no shame in it.

He was changing, ever-changing, yet he was always this: this man who didn’t care where desire sprung from, whose skin his hands found shelter in, how deep and how dark one’s soul was and whether it complimented his own. He wasn’t one to be choosy, to express that someone’s darkness was too heavy and the other’s nonexistent. There was a depth in Ethan that Dorian seemed to notice with one blink of his generous eyes. Ethan delighted that for once in his life, the other man didn’t judge him for his own darkness, didn’t compare it to his own so fervently that the need in Ethan was doused entirely in one second that was far from earth-shattering.

Since arriving in a new country and finding himself in a city so very different from his own world and his own past, Ethan started to feel that unique, once entirely unwelcome darkness as less than a separate part of himself and more akin to a part that blended too well with what he had always run from. There was his father on one side, ever on the chase and Ethan always running, just running until he could no longer feel the pull of sufficient air into his heaving lungs.

There was Dorian on the other end, there was Ethan running after and not from. There was the suspicion that Dorian was dragging him along, but not in an ill way.

He could have hallucinated the kiss, the way their skin melted together for four minutes that seemed more like eternities, dripping with the hope that he wasn't lost but simply searching, ever-searching for a world where he wasn’t running. In those seconds they were moving against each other, a dance that felt more foreign than familiar, but it wasn’t movement. Ethan had never felt so still. He hadn’t been running anymore, after all. He would pick the paranoia back up once he had overstayed his welcome, but Dorian was pausing in his own chase, pulling him in and simultaneously pushing him down deeper, wanting to throw everything he could at Ethan as if knowing he would accept it.

As if knowing he could _take_ it.

Ethan had held back his doubt where Dorian would merely brush against it with excitement before moving on, but never his fear. There was something in Dorian to be feared, something that was even more misunderstood, but not to be feared from Ethan.

He could have hallucinated that kiss and everything that came after. Whatever had been in that drink could have lowered his inhibitions without him even realizing it. Ethan could very well have left with nothing and been none the wiser. He could have completely imagined the feel of the other man’s skin, the taste of Dorian’s bottom lip as he sucked on it, drawing the sweet nectar of his saliva into his own mouth and his luxurious scent into Ethan’s own pores. He could have merely envisioned Dorian’s surprise when Ethan kissed him, when Ethan grabbed him with more strength and brutal need than want, more strength than he had ever shown anyone.

He wasn’t in the States anymore, he could have shown Dorian whoever he wanted him to see. It wasn’t so simple. He had already shown him that weakness when Dorian intruded on him after Brona had left, bitter words clouding his better judgment.

Who would have known if the night was really what Ethan had needed. It was something deeper than just foolishness, something brighter in some ways and darker in others.

He didn’t want to be someone else though. Like it or not, his past had led him here. Into this new world that took one look at him and didn’t spit him back out but beckoned him closer, opening its mouth wider, tongue flicking out to scoop him up whole, changing parts of him that only seemed to heighten who he was. He was pulled down slowly into Vanessa’s multitude of decadent charms, into Dorian’s dark and tantalizing presence, into some beast-like part of him, his hands clutching Dorian’s throat for no reason, as if he was grasping the throat of the world, claiming it for his own.

And the way Dorian had looked at him: like he had known Ethan was about to swallow him whole, falsely innocent eyes and all. The way Dorian hadn’t cared.

And the way Ethan had felt: so simply one part weak and one portion irrevocably tainted but strong - strong _er_ \- for it. The soft stroke and the hard grasp one and the same. The secrets behind Dorian’s eyes, ones he wanted to rip apart, the chill in himself that Ethan wanted to smother with Dorian’s ancient heat. Maybe it wasn’t the drink that had heightened his senses, maybe it was the silky texture of the other man’s hair, or Dorian’s multitude of love bites that felt not enough and plenty one second to the next.

There had been one moment where he couldn’t hold himself in check, one moment where a loss he couldn’t describe or understand shadowed all the parts of him that mattered. All the times he had fought back when it had seemed hopeless, run when it seemed as if he were frozen in place. All the times he had never let himself down.

There was the sensation of the silk sheets beneath him and Dorian’s small yet capable hands gripping his waist, holding him in place, and then there was nothing. Numbness then sensory deprivation then being tumbled headfirst into voices and then images. Memories. Gray and cold, like being doused in freezing water, but real.

“How could you share your bed with another man? My son! You have ruined this family! Do you hear me? Ethan!”

He was pulled backwards before his father could finish his tirade, and the tidal wave he was ripped out of only reappeared again as it was dragged out of him, unchecked tears splashing like droplets of blood onto the sheets beneath him, a softness now that felt false, like cruelty. They were dripping down onto Dorian’s skin too, which was in the way, which wouldn’t let go. Ethan closed his eyes and tried to imagine Dorian staying, tried to imagine Dorian not being turned off by this, by this weakness that he couldn’t run _or_ hide from.

It wasn’t a dream when he opened his leaking eyes. _He_ was still _here_ , eyes locked onto Ethan’s with understanding and _not_ pity, hands still on Ethan’s back as if afraid to make any sudden movements. Sure enough, Ethan had felt something in him shift, some deadly force ready to be unleashed, but Dorian held it in check.

Held _him_ in check.

“You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

_You don’t have to._

It was something his father would never understand. It wasn’t that Dorian was a man. There were distinctions there but they didn’t mean anything. Brona was beautiful and so was Dorian, but Brona’s beauty was delicately saturnine that sometimes came off as abrasive and Dorian’s a different kind of beauty, but one with hints of femininity in the gleam of his eyes and the way he poised himself, observing what others had no hope of seeing. There were details about him that reminded Ethan fondly of Vanessa, that could bring him closer to her if he wanted to be so selfish.

In the midst of that beauty, meticulously feigned innocence and even boyishness, Dorian seemed far wiser than Ethan had had the time to glean from life. He seemed to already know every pleasure that could be taken from life and Ethan wasn’t quite ready to dapple in what Dorian hadn’t yet drowned in, but Dorian didn’t make him feel worse for it.

It was easy to love both Brona and Dorian in their own ways. The sexual urges that plagued him when Brona gave him one of her sweetly sardonic smiles, when he caught her heady scent of the ocean, were similar to the desires he felt when around Dorian. It was becoming one with another human being for just a few minutes, or even hours, and gender had nothing to do with it. Body parts might be different, might be handed differently from one person in his life to the next, but love and affection and need was reciprocated and not taken away.

Dorian had given him a release from Brona’s bitter anger. Ethan had given him a taste of what Dorian had probably had a taste of many times over, but Dorian treated it as if the experience was new to him, new and precious. The experience was Ethan, _he_ was new and precious. He wasn’t running like a hamster in a cage, he wasn’t there strictly for Dorian’s amusement and pleasure.

They were in this together, Dorian’s hair sweeping across his face like the gentlest wind, Dorian’s hands guiding him, soothing the beast, or whatever it was, inside him. Dorian’s hands and eyes and skin doing nothing but easing him.

_Please don’t let this be a hallucination._

“Thank you, for tonight.” He had felt the clarification was needed, though later on realized it had made him look weaker.

Dorian hadn’t seemed to care. He had given Ethan an odd but playful nonetheless look, thumb brushing his bottom lip, tracing along his cheek, smoothing over his beard. “It’s not over yet. Unless you wish it to be so.”

Ethan had shook his head, a head that felt ten times too big on a neck that was sore. He laid it down on Dorian’s chest and Dorian laid back in that effortless, graceful pose that Ethan was already starting to love despite only having met the man.

Of course, that feeling was already being shaken up.

He couldn’t be what Dorian wanted, or at least what he imagined Dorian wanted. Dorian seemed to overly excite in the prospect of Ethan shifting before his eyes before he even knew one piece of him, but he had calmed down considerably when Ethan slowed down and screamed his want to be accepted.

There was openness and childishness in those eyes, but even so Ethan had felt himself as the younger man, as the one who had less and therefore less to lose. He couldn't explain it, but as easy as he felt around Dorian, like he could ask any question, he had never once during that night felt the need to, nor to explain his weakness for Dorian, yet even more so his fear when considering the notion that it wasn't a weakness, but a fate that was entirely his, just as certain as it was linked to Dorian's.

So if it was some hallucination, which Ethan couldn’t quite wrap his head around, it was a good one. A good memory in half a lifetime of memories that clawed at his subconscious until he nearly buckled from the force of his father’s will.

He could taste that concoction every time he thought of Dorian, every time he heard Brona’s words in his head, spinning viciously in perfect circles. There were things here worth staying for: Vanessa’s trust; Dorian’s generosity in the way of acceptance and excitement and a sadness that Ethan could howl along to; Brona’s bones jutting through her back and thighs, hollowed out by the world and by sickness and given to Ethan to make whole again; pride in being useful to Sir Malcolm in his hell-bent mission to free his daughter from the bowels of a filth he could chase after without much thought.

Dorian’s eyes had been on his back when Ethan had made to leave, gaze heavy but curious, a presence drenched in a post-coital almost affection that pulled Ethan back with laughter long-turned chilled around the edges. He _had_ overstayed his welcome. Dorian frowned at the shift that no doubt occurred over Ethan’s face. It was his turn to cup Ethan’s cheek, thumb memorizing him in a way that Ethan appreciated immensely. The man turned from chilled to warm again, Ethan basking in the glow.

Maybe it wasn’t so much about wanting to be someone different, maybe it wasn’t up to him. Maybe he was changing so fast that the old Ethan was just left behind in the dust of his mistakes.

“Still want to be someone else?”

Ethan had glanced up at him. Dorian was adjusting his sleeve, eyes flicking up to Ethan once and twice and the third time Ethan remembered to breathe again. He wanted to stride forward with all the confidence left in him and cup the man’s face in his hands again, wanted to feel good enough, the way Dorian had made him feel as they shared in and tasted a hint of each other’s past and darkness. Dorian warmed him up at the edges first, then prodded at his molten core, teased the hidden light and made it brighter. Dorian had been staring only at him, hand still curled against his sleeve but the adjustment forgotten.

It had been strange now that Ethan remembered it, no stranger than the night had been to someone peering in from the outside, but Ethan had felt light. Like he was floating.   

“I don’t know.”

**FIN**


End file.
